As a NixOS user, I will definitely not recommend beginners to use this distro. It's just a poorly documented, not user-friendly Linux.
I use it because I really hate .config and dotfiles, like why do I need to edit several files for just one thing?
Standalone nix installation and Home-manager would be fine though, I still not recommend them because at least I cannot tell if the binary I'm executing right now is installed from Nix or apt or whatever until I execute which
No. It's the fifth version. The first one was published in 1992, three years before this